


Kindness

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Crying, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, I Took A Bad Thing And Made It Worse, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Sobbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 09:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21473578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: Rafael Barba's downfall was much worse than previously thought. More than 18 months later, he and Carisi see each other at Forlini's.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	Kindness

A little after 9 o’clock on a Thursday night, Forlini’s was quiet save for a few couples in the dimly lit dining room unwilling to waste their weekends on second dates, and ADA Sonny Carisi alone at the bar, his lean figure hunched over his phone and a tumbler of scotch.

Carisi was usually one for finishing off two or three bottles of beer while running his mouth in a booth with friends, not that he had many of those left in NYPD or on Staten Island anymore after transferring to Manhattan SVU during his second year of law school. Funny, he thought, how his colleagues at SVU mocked him regardless of whether he put on the airs of an unfortunately-mustachioed overconfident bridge-and-tunnel cop or played the role of an assistant district attorney speaking of patinae of probable cause.

He was wallowing, feeling a little too sorry for himself, staring down into the amber stillness of scotch served neat.

Barba’s scotch.

Sometimes — rarely, but sometimes — he’d go to Forlini’s by himself and order his onetime mentor’s favorite scotch for the smell, the warmth, the memory of a time before he knew that Barba had betrayed the departments he’d once worked so hard for.

The first betrayal had been easier to digest, though Carisi didn’t know that at the time. When he confronted Barba about the murder charges he was facing and why he’d hired Randy Dworkin rather than Rita Calhoun as his defense attorney, Barba’s eyes turned dark. “Stay out of it,” Barba had snapped. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of it.

He stayed out of it: he didn’t attend the trial and didn’t try to contact Barba when he left without anything more than a cruel (though reportedly tearful) goodbye to the best friend who’d stood by him.

That heartbreak was nothing compared to what came later that summer, when McCoy charged a man who’d flipped the life support switch on an infant dying of Tay Sachs, the son of a family friend, with murder. The state Attorney General and governor demanded an investigation into why McCoy had filed murder charges twice when there was no precedent. 

McCoy stepped down a week before the Attorney General revealed that the Manhattan DA’s office had been receiving donations form a group seeking to make end-of-life decisions illegal, to take those decisions out of the hands of everyone other than a higher power. McCoy and the ADA who’d been working with SVU after Barba’s departure had been corrupted by money, and maybe also by the sense of power someone might acquire in denying rights to their constituents. 

Maybe. Or maybe Carisi was overthinking a simple case of political corruption. He overthought a lot. 

He’d found Benson crying in the break room one night when he’d just returned from a crime scene. Her phone was in her hand, and that hand was trembling.

By the time Carisi rushed over to comfort her, she’d already straightened her posture and sniffled all the tears back into her face, leaving no evidence other than a red tint to her eyes. 

She asked him to follow her to her office, where she told him that Barba had been disbarred and was facing corruption charges himself: he’d been approached by the organization now under state investigation months before SVU had encountered the Householders, before the baby was born, to participate in their plan to set the precedent that would change the laws in New York State and after that, the whole country. 

“That doesn’t sound like Barba,” Carisi said, bewildered by the news. 

Benson closed her eyes tight. A hint of a sob came through as she spoke: “He admitted to everything. Rita Calhoun’s working on a plea deal on his behalf. He admitted to _everything_, Sonny.”

When Carisi heard those words — _Rita Calhoun’s working on a plea deal on his behalf_ — he knew that Barba must have done exactly what Benson, and later the Attorney General, said he did. 

“He’ll be killed on the inside,” Benson said, now all-out crying again, “and this must have something to do with the Abreu case or the Muñozes or someone else from his past, but —”

“Yeah,” Carisi said, “yeah, I get it.”

As he and Benson cried together that night, he promised her he’d apply for a position under the new DA, one that would eventually lead him to take on the role that Alex Cabot, Casey Novak, and Rafael Barba had once filled. 

And now here he was.

When he’d assured Rollins that she’d dodged a bullet with Dr. Adler, he was empathizing, fully. 

What a bullet he’d dodged with the man he’d once considered his mentor. 

Here he was, drinking alone at Forlini’s, staring into his scotch, when a familiar hand settled on to the edge of the bar. 

Carisi said nothing as Barba himself sat beside him and ordered a scotch. 

He glimpsed the disgraced former ADA out of the corner of his eye. Barba looked gaunt, with dark circles under his eyes and white streaks in his hair. 

He’d spent three months in an upstate prison. In spite of everything, Carisi had breathed a sigh of relief when he’d heard that Barba made it out alive.

Carisi had wanted to look further into the case, into why Barba had teamed up with the Householders and a shady political organization to snow over the local justice system. He never pulled any files out of fear that what he’d learn would further smash the shards of the heart that had been broken since he’d learned that Barba was corrupt. 

“Congratulations,” Barba offered. “I hear you’re the —”

“Are you here to see if I can be bought?” Carisi asked hoarsely, all the bitterness in the world behind that question. He turned to look directly at Barba, whose lips were parted, his expression frozen in surprise at the interruption. “Given who you are, a corrupt former ADA who’s been disbarred for —” He gritted his teeth and cut himself off, sipping his scotch before adding, “Screw you, Barba.”

“That’s fair,” Barba said, and Carisi could tell from the tone of his voice that he meant it. Barba left a ten for the bartender and shifted his weight on the barstool, poised to leave.

Curiosity and distrust were fighting with each other in Carisi’s attorney-detective brain. 

“What brings you to the city?” Carisi asked, trying to maintain a mean sarcasm.

“I have a hearing on Monday regarding having my law license reinstated. If they say no, I’m going back to Miami. I’ve been working with the Florida Innocence Collective as a paralegal.”

“How nice for you.”

“Sonny,” Barba said, and Carisi struggled not to flinch at Barba’s use of his first name, “I’m sorry for what I put you through.”

“You want to apologize, you should apologize to Liv and her kid first.”

“I spoke to her briefly last night,” Barba said, settling back into his seat. “It did not go well.”

“Good for her.”

Barba closed his eyes. “I have done nothing to earn anyone’s forgiveness. I have done nothing to earn a sympathetic ear. All I want you to know is that I owed some not-great people some not-great favors.”

“And instead of asking your NYPD lieutenant best friend for help, you —”

“When my father died, my mother and I found out that he had a lot of money, more than a million dollars, that he’d kept from us. We lived in the South Bronx under his first while he kept another family comfortable on Long Island.”

“I have no sympathy for you, if that’s what you’re going for,” Carisi said, a lie he told himself so he wouldn’t have to sympathize with the corrupt liar sitting next to him.

“But I’m sure you already know about this. I’m sure you somehow got your hands on the casefile.”

Carisi laughed, loudly, Staten Islandly, in Barba’s face. “You think I wanted to know?”

Barba shut his eyes again. “Liv won’t talk to me. My mother won’t talk to me, even though I did what I did for her. I thought you might be willing to listen.”

“Stop feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself. Whatever compassion I’ve got, it’s not for you anymore. I just worked a case where the guys you were helping out — them and their causes —”

“I don’t believe in any of that —”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe in. What matters is what you _did_.”

“They were caught, and the laws were never changed,” Barba reminded him, a desperation that Carisi had never heard in his voice before. 

“And if they had been, if they’d won, it would have been on your shoulders, all of it.” Carisi finished off his scotch in one last gulp and slammed the glass on the bar, not hard enough to break it, but just hard enough to warrant a stern look from the bartender. “You shoulda seen what they did to this little girl, thirteen years old, they didn’t give a shit about her, just like they didn’t give a shit about —”

“Sonny, please.”

He glanced over and saw tears staining Barba’s cheeks.

_Damn it._

Carisi remained stoic, as if this were an interrogation where the suspect was strategizing to gain undeserved sympathy. 

“Just let me tell you what I told Liv, and if you want to tell me to crawl back into my corrupt cave I won’t blame you. My father held down ports in the Bronx for the Masucci crime family in the 70s and 80s. I had to go through them to get my father’s money because otherwise my mother would have been broke. All her teacher’s salary had gone towards end-of-life care for the man who once broke every bone in her face. I did it for her.”

“And the other advantage to getting your father’s money was that you incidentally wound up with an Upper East Side apartment and a closet full of thousand-dollar suits.”

“He owed me,” Barba said. “For all the broken bones, all the terror, he owed me.”

Barba pushed away his glass, picked up his coat from the seat next to him, took a moment to recover from his outburst, and stood up. “I’m sorry, Sonny,” he said. “You’re a better man than I am. A smarter man.”

Against his better judgment, Carisi followed Barba out the door, across Centre Street towards the subway. Halfway there, Barba whirled around, surprised that Carisi hadn’t yet walked away.

Carisi could see the degree to which the spark had disappeared from Barba’s eyes, but wondered if that even mattered, given the gravity of the offenses that Barba had committed. Still, Barba looked exhausted — more than that, exhausted of being exhausted — and a small part of Carisi wanted to search his own soul for forgiveness.

“Where are you headed?” Carisi asked.

“Hotel.” 

“When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t remember.”

For whatever reason, those three words were a tipping point for Carisi. The Rafael Barba he knew, the Rafael Barba he’d once looked up to, cared deeply about, was always eating. “C’mon, Rafael,” he said, allowing a hint of gentleness to creep in, “invite me up to your room and I’ll order us a pizza.”

Barba raised then lowered his eyebrows, a smirk teasing the corner of his mouth. “If this were three years ago, I’d have thought you were trying to get in my pants.”

“We’ll order a pizza and I’ll help you plan your strategy for Monday.”

Barba looked up at Carisi. “Rita and I have it covered. They’re going to say no, but we’ll give it our best effort anyway. Besides,” he said, reaching out to touch Carisi’s elbow, then quickly withdrawing his hand, “you can’t help me. I trust that you’re an excellent attorney, but you’re an ADA, so you don’t want to be seen associating with me.”

“I’d still like to get you a pizza, if that’s all right,” Carisi said, and Barba threw up his hands. 

“Your funeral if Hadid chews you out for commiserating with me.”

Barba and Carisi took the subway three stops to Barba’s hotel room in downtown Brooklyn, where Carisi kept his promise and ordered his former mentor a pizza.

For a moment, the two men stood facing each other.

“I’m sorry,” Barba said. “I set the last two years into motion long before we met. You shouldn’t forgive me, and neither should Liv, or Rollins, or Fin, or Pippa, or anyone else I worked with. I was stupid. We needed the money — he kept it from us, we suffered while he — in any case, I am an extraordinarily stupid man who thought the Masucci crime family was willing to help me because my father had done so much for them. I didn’t expect them to call in a favor fifteen years later, and certainly not a favor on behalf of —”

Carisi reached out and pulled Barba into a hug. “Carisi, you don’t have to —” Barba started to say, but he soon sank into the embrace, almost reflexively, but with intent, with _need_.

Barba buried his forehead in Carisi’s shoulder and began to sob into the ADA’s dress shirt. All Carisi could do was fully wrap his arms around Barba and pull him closer.

His detective brain still harbored some doubt, but he’d never seen anyone fake fitful sobs before, so maybe he had to trust Barba in this moment. Maybe what Barba desperately needed was for one person in the world, anyone, to trust him again. 

“He owed me,” Barba said, repeating the sentiment he’d expressed earlier at Forlini’s, this time muffled by sobs and Carisi’s shirt, “he owed me, he owed me.”

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Carisi assured him, tilting his head slightly so he could kiss Barba’s hairline. “You’re okay.”

Barba clung to Carisi, apologizing when he realized he was clutching Carisi’s shirt.

By the time the pizza arrived, Barba’s eyes were dry and distant again, but red and swollen from the breakdown he’d so desperately needed. 

They sat together on the couch opposite the king sized bed, the pizza box open on the coffee table in front of them. Carisi handed Barba a bottle of water. “Drink something, at least,” he said.

Barba opened the bottle, took a long drink, and leaned back on the couch. “You’re the only person who’s shown me any kindness since I’ve been back. It’s appreciated. A lot, especially because for all intents and purposes, you shouldn’t be showing me any kindness after all the lies.”

“Maybe I’m a fool,” Carisi said wistfully, leaning back so he and Barba were eye-to-eye. 

“You? Never.” Barba carefully laid an open hand over Carisi’s closed fist. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. Fordham at night while working twelve-hour shifts with one of NYPD’s toughest units? I admire you, and I should have told you that when we worked together.”

“Flattery’ll get you nowhere with me, Counselor,” Carisi said, and of course the word _Counselor_ was meant to be a joke, a reference to their previous roles at SVU, but the second he saw sadness flash across Barba’s eyes, his whole face, Carisi leaned in and kissed his lips, resting one hand on Barba’s cheek. 

“Years ago,” Barba said, “you and I were talking in the bar after Dodds’s funeral, both of us broken down for our own reasons, for a lot of our own reasons, and I wanted to ask you to come home with me and” — he moved in closer for his own kiss this time, placing a hand behind Carisi’s head, allowing his tongue to dart out from between his lips and briefly meet Carisi’s tongue — “god, you looked so good in dress blues.”

Carisi couldn’t help smirking. When Barba smiled, tears sprang to his eyes again. 

“I’ll stay tonight,” Carisi said, catching the sweetness in his own voice, filling him with doubt over how much of a goddamn moron he probably was, those doubts melting away when Barba looked at him with sad, sloping eyes, “and I’ll be here however you need me if you eat a slice of pizza.”

“I’ve lost so much, too much,” Barba said.

“I know.” Carisi nudged the pizza box. “C’mon. One slice is all I ask.”

Barba took a slice, and then a bite. “I mean it,” he told Carisi when he was finished chewing. “I admire you.”


End file.
